Resting Place is a series of performance events and installations based on the archive of Clarice Alberta Spratling, following the journey which her diary describes through her time as VAD nurse in WWI. Find out full details about the many layers of the project here: www.restingplace.eu

Resting Place Folkestone, Rehearsal. Image: Jonathan Pigram

Folkestone Seafront: The Performance
The Folkestone performance of Resting Place is all about the horizon. It is about the opening up of Clarice Spratling’s horizon as she leaves on a boat from Folkestone to France. It is about the horizon that is framed by the bell on the seafront, where the outline of the French coast only becomes a reality when the sight is clear — just as those who went to war only seldom had moments of clarity about what they would face there.

And it is about the horizon as a space where earth and heaven meet, where the dead touch the living.

The movement for this performance takes place on the fine line in between, a line that Clarice would have navigated constantly as she tended to the soldiers who may or may not cross over to the other side into death.

We have kept the movements simple and clean, an echo of the efficient movements of a hospital ward and the lifeline of military order which gave a sense of normality, holding chaos at bay in the camps of France.

Resting Place Folkestone, Rehearsal. Image: Jonathan Pigram

Resting Place Folkestone (2014), Rehearsal. Image: Jonathan Pigram

Resting Place Folkestone (2014): The performance space under the bell. Image: Dawn Cole